Futile Devices Scans

Elio’s Notes: The title riffs on the saying 明知山有虎，偏向虎山行: “knowing there’s a tiger on the mountain, yet going toward Tiger Mountain anyway.” Here, 明知 (“knowing full well”) is cheekily treated like the name of a place, so the joke becomes: if you know there’s a tiger there, then don’t go to “Mingzhi Mountain.”

Yugong Zhaoye had tolerated this bastard for the entire journey. Now, for the first time, he seriously wanted to stab him.

Whatever hidden circumstances might have existed, Xie Youlan was deliberately using the suffering Wei Fu had endured for more than ten years as a casual provocation. Even if Yugong Zhaoye beat him senseless, it would hardly be unjustified.

The only obstacle was that it felt inappropriate to beat someone’s child directly in front of his mother.

His fingers settled lightly on the hilt of the blade strapped to the outside of his thigh.

Before he could decide whether to act, Jiang Fengxun had already asked in alarm and confusion, “What do you mean, mute? What happened to Guan-lang?”

Xie Youlan was about to let out another sinister laugh when Cheng Yu suddenly reached over, pinched the side of his waist, and twisted hard.

“Speak properly,” Cheng Yu warned under his breath.

Xie Youlan sucked in one long, painful breath.

“You’re already using your hands…”

Cheng Yu lowered his voice further and threatened him, “Keep talking nonsense and there’s another one over there preparing to use a blade. Behave.”

No one knew which assassin from Longsha was more effective, but Xie Youlan finally retracted his arrogant claws and fangs. With his face dark, he sat to one side in silence and listened to Jiang Fengxun recount what had happened that rainy night, looking as though someone were chasing him from behind with a needle aimed at his backside.

Once both sides compared their versions of events, they discovered that the mother and her two sons were three bitter gourds growing from the same vine, each cursed in his or her own way.

Jiang Fengxun had fled from Beizhu Palace’s pursuit with her younger son, only for her elder son to cut the younger boy’s throat with his own hand on a stormy night.

Xie Youlan had been only twelve, filled with hatred and forced by his biological father to hunt down his own mother and another man’s “bastard.”

Wei Fu had barely been old enough to speak. His throat was injured and the terror robbed him of his voice. From then on, he lived as a mute for more than a decade.

The true culprit remained safely hidden behind the scenes.

The innocent mother and sons had been left to tear at one another in despair beneath the rain. Hatred erupted violently, became soaked through with innocent blood, and changed all of their lives.

Ironically, Yugong Zhaoye was the one who had investigated Wei Fu’s experiences over those ten-odd years most thoroughly.

He filled in several missing details from the side.

Jiang Fengxun seemed to have accepted him as Wei Fu’s spokesman. Wiping away her tears, she said softly, “What happened wasn’t Youlan’s fault. Guan-lang was still so young then. He didn’t know—”

“Enough. Why dig up sesame seeds and rotten grain from years ago?” Xie Youlan interrupted impatiently. “He talks more than enough now. You don’t need to worry about him.”

“So that’s what happened…”

Yugong Zhaoye looked thoughtfully toward him. His slightly narrowed eyes became long and cold as though he were weighing Xie Youlan all over again.

“No wonder I asked him several times and he always told me he injured himself in a fall.”

“How interesting.”

“He would rather lie to me than expose someone who hurt him?”

Xie Youlan’s eyelashes flickered twice, as though he had been waiting for a blade to fall only to have a handful of sand thrown into his eyes instead.

“Don’t ask me.” He sneered coldly. “How would I know what goes through that idiot’s head when he never learns his lesson?”

Only the people who had lived through the event truly understood what had happened.

Jiang Fengxun suddenly realized something.

“You mean… Guan-lang knows everything?”

“Looks that way.” Yugong Zhaoye tapped his own temple meaningfully. “Madam Jiang, he is your child.”

Wei Fu had been only three when it happened. Everyone assumed he could not remember. Xie Youlan certainly would never explain it to him.

Yet after more than ten years, through unfamiliar blood ties and a tangled web of hatred and affection, Wei Fu had somehow seen through the entire disaster and recognized that the first person to yield had actually been Xie Youlan.

Their mother had left him without a single word.

Day after day, Xie Youlan had listened to Xie Jing enumerate her sins: abandoning husband and child, eloping with another man, stealing a secret manual with her lover, humiliating Beizhu Palace…

She was shameless, wicked, beyond forgiveness.

Xie Youlan had to hate her. Otherwise, he was weak and contemptible.

To wash away the humiliation, he had to personally kill the “bastard.” Otherwise, he was unworthy to be Xie Jing’s son or the Young Palace Master of Beizhu Palace.

Twelve was too young for anyone to speak seriously about mature understanding.

It was more than old enough to kill someone in a burst of hatred.

No one knew what the twelve-year-old Xie Youlan had truly thought.

Under enormous pressure, he had somehow restrained his killing intent and spared Wei Fu with a wound that was painful but not fatal.

With that single cut, he severed both the hatred and the remaining bond between himself and Jiang Fengxun.

Xie Youlan mocked from the side, “Have you considered that maybe you’re thinking too much? That idiot may genuinely remember nothing and truly believe he hurt himself in a fall.”

Yugong Zhaoye said, “Even if he didn’t understand what happened back then, you later saved him from Beizhu Palace’s spies. He should have been able to guess something from that.”

“Stop flattering yourself.”

Xie Youlan clearly found no pleasure in being stared at as though everyone had suddenly discovered that he was secretly a good person.

“If I hadn’t stopped them, what was I supposed to do? Let that idiot walk up to my father and announce he was Wei Huaijun’s son, trigger the old man’s obsession, strangle him myself on the spot, and then get forced into digging three feet into the ground searching everywhere for the others?”

“One by one, they were going mad, running away, or being idiots. In the end, the only person left to suffer the consequences would have been me. Why should I?”

Pfft…

Cheng Yu finally broke. His shoulders shook with laughter as he lowered his head deeply and turned his back.

Xie Youlan: “…”

Yugong Zhaoye suddenly said, “Brother Xie, I have something truthful to say. Don’t get angry.”

Xie Youlan: “I don’t want to hear it. Shut up.”

Yugong Zhaoye did not care whether he wanted to hear it.

“This habit of being incapable of speaking without putting on airs seems to be hereditary in your Xie family.”

Xie Youlan: “?”

They said one should never hit someone in the face.

The greatest possible insult to Xie Youlan’s character was to tell him he resembled Xie Jing.

He immediately struck back.

“He couldn’t even be bothered to come up with a convincing excuse when he brushed you off, and you believed him anyway! You have the nerve to accuse me of putting on airs?”

“Yes,” Yugong Zhaoye answered serenely. “He’s practically Longsha’s ancestor already, and before long he’ll become my ancestor too. Even if I have to pretend I’m blind, I still have to give him some face.”

“But you and I are irrelevant to each other, aren’t we?”

“Whether you’re good or bad, whether you’re some great saint or the worst villain alive, none of that has anything to do with me. I don’t care.”

“If you really want someone to care about you, go throw a tantrum in front of your younger brother. Longsha doesn’t have any tradition of forcing brothers to become enemies.”

Dead silence fell around them.

Xie Youlan looked as though that bolt of heavenly thunder had struck him directly in the head.

Cheng Yu sighed in admiration. “I used to think that although Your Highness frequently fails to understand the mood, there are occasions when charging straight through to the end produces miraculous results.”

The wicked heretic who had practically tried to write I am a terrible person across his forehead was driven pale by the two Longsha assassins working in tandem. Veins jumped at his temple, and a mouthful of blood seemed ready to rise in his throat.

Through clenched teeth, he said, “Longsha is truly finished.”

Cheng Yu, delighted by the spectacle, held Xie Youlan’s pulse with one hand and rested his chin in the other.

“Oh dear. Embarrassed into anger.”

Xie Youlan looked as though he had been dead for some time.

Having finally subdued the noisy Palace Master Xie and personally created a peaceful environment for conversation, Yugong Zhaoye inclined himself slightly toward Jiang Fengxun with impeccable manners.

“Madam Jiang, please continue.”

Jiang Fengxun, who had been thoroughly enjoying their quarrel: “Ah… oh. Where was I?”

The knife wound that night finally hardened her resolve.

She abandoned the idea of continuing to flee with Wei Fu. Wei Huaijun came forward instead and entrusted their younger son to the Duke Who Stabilizes the Nation, restoring Wei Fu’s place as a descendant of the Wei family.

No matter how far Beizhu Palace’s reach extended, it would never casually attack one of Xiling’s great aristocratic houses.

As long as Wei Fu had nothing publicly connecting him to Jiang Fengxun and Wei Huaijun, he would be safe.

The same logic applied to Xie Youlan.

Mother and son were pieces Xie Jing used to restrain one another.

As long as Jiang Fengxun remained within Xie Jing’s sight, Xie Youlan would remain trapped in that stormy night, repeatedly turned by his own father into the blade used to stab his mother.

So she had to disappear.

Only by vanishing completely could both her sons have a path to survival.

“You hid yourself well enough.” Xie Youlan still had not fully recovered from Yugong Zhaoye’s frontal assault and spoke dryly. “The old bastard searched for years. Even before he died, he was still muttering about ordering me to bring you back. You practically became his heart demon.”

Jiang Fengxun barely curved her lips.

“The world is vast and the sea of suffering endless. It isn’t so easy for two people to find each other.”

After leaving Xiling, she and Wei Huaijun carefully chose a remote little kingdom far from Dongyu, one where the forces of the jianghu were weak.

To avoid Beizhu Palace’s eyes, they built a home deep within the mountains and lived in seclusion.

Yilin Kingdom.

Tianxuan Mountain.

In the twelfth year of Tianbao, Yanyuan invaded Yilin. The war lasted three years before Yanyuan occupied the entire kingdom. Yilin’s surviving forces retreated to Tianxuan Mountain.

In the sixteenth year of Tianbao, Sulü Yingpan received imperial orders to eradicate the remaining resistance on Tianxuan Mountain.

That year, Wei Huaijun led others in resisting the Yanyuan army until his strength was exhausted and he died in battle.

Jiang Fengxun and the surviving elderly, women, and children were taken under military guard on the spot.

Something dropped heavily inside Yugong Zhaoye’s chest.

“Uncle Wei… is already dead?”

“Yes.”

Until now, Jiang Fengxun had been gentle and willing to answer almost every question.

Only now did her face tighten. She looked almost expressionless as she answered with exceptional calm and brevity.

“He was a chivalrous gentleman. He couldn’t bear to watch innocent people suffer.”

Wei Huaijun had left the household of the Duke Who Stabilizes the Nation to join the Linghua Sect because he wanted to wander the jianghu as a righteous swordsman.

He lived freely and followed his own heart.

He had been willing to spend years investigating the plight of Jiang Fengxun, a woman he had met only by chance, and defy the judgment of the world to take her away from that den of demons.

And he had been willing to draw his sword for Yilin commoners he had never known, disregarding his own life.

The “chivalry” he upheld throughout his life meant walking in the opposite direction of every easier choice he could have made.

Yugong Zhaoye wanted to ask more, but Jiang Fengxun raised a hand and avoided the subject.

Wei Huaijun had appeared too late and left too early.

He illuminated her life only briefly, yet the light had been so brilliant that she could never forget it.

So she did not speak of him.

She did not allow herself to miss him.

She could not accept it.

She did not dare think too deeply.

She had never been able to let go.

Jiang Fengxun had endured countless kinds of suffering in her life.

Only this one wound had never been worn smooth by time.